We had a nice quiet Christmas in the ZenKimchi household.  I didn’t even bother doing any herculean feats of cooking.  But I did make my Eun Jeong a nice breakfast featuring her favorite, Mammy’s French Toast.  Mammy was my great-grandmother who could make any food taste good.  She made stuff that we kids would never like anywhere else.

Her slight variation on French toast was always a treat.  It didn’t require any powdered sugar or syrup–just lots of butter.  And you could eat it with your hands.  It’s vaguely like New Orleans-style pain perdu.  Pain Perdu, or “Lost Bread,” is a Christmas morning tradition in my family (we are from the Mobile Bay area), made with stale baguette slices soaked overnight in egg and milk and baked in the oven while we open gifts.  I didn’t have baguettes on hand, so I did the quicky version.  I also thought I’d make use of the tangerines in the house, too, giving it a little Christmas flavor.

INGREDIENTS

French Toast
4 slices of Bread
3 Eggs
2 Tbsp Sugar
1/4 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Tbsp Milk
1 tsp Tangerine Zest
Butter, lots

Tangerine Compote
3 Tangerines, peeled and divided into sections
2 tsp Sugar
1/4 Water
2 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
1 Lemon wedge

1. Combine the ingredients for the Tangerine Compote in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Then bring it down to a simmer until much of the water has evaporated, and the liquid is a little syrupy.

2. Beat the eggs with the sugar, vanilla extract, milk and tangerine zest.

3. Heat a pan to medium and melt a pat of butter.  Dunk both sides of a bread slice into the egg mixture and cook in the pan.

4. When it starts browning, turn it over.  I frequently fiddle with the heat, turning it up and down, removing the pan, so that it doesn’t get so hot that it scorches the bread.  When it’s browned, put the French toast on a plate and put another pat of butter on it.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until all the bread is gone.

6. Top with the Tangerine Compote.  I also added some bacon and a poached egg.

For quick Saturday morning breakfasts, I just make the French toast without the compote or the tangerine zest.  The French toast is already sweetened with the sugar in the egg mixture, so pouring syrup over it is overkill.  It’s good with bacon and a chilly glass of milk–and Saturday morning cartoons.

Tags: christmas, french toast, Korea

To an expat like me, Korean Christmas lacks the warmth of family and tradition.  It’s a new holiday, and it’s treated more like Valentine’s Day.  It’s been around for a while, at least since G.I.s gave gifts during the Korean War.  But I’d give a guess that it hit big commercial holiday status around the time that Mariah Carey came out with her Christmas album, considering that’s basically all the Christmas music you’re going to get–on repeat–with some occasional George Michael’s “Last Christmas.”

For a Christmas music connoisseur, Korea is hell.

It makes up for some of it with amazing Christmas light displays that beat out New York City.  The Korean Christmas cake is the other highlight.  In fact, through investigations into what Korean families do on Christmas Day, it’s the only highlight.  Christmas consists of opening a few gifts and eating a Christmas cake.  No feasts.  No carols.  No big family gatherings.  Santa is still an awkward thing, too.  One of my friends was out with his Korean wife this week Santa shopping for their kids.  He went to look for something and found his young daughter holding a present while sitting in the shopping cart.  He looked at his wife.

“Um, isn’t that a Santa gift?”

“Yes.”

“Why is she holding it?”

“What’s the big deal?”

It’s a concept that has to still work out a few bugs.

Since the Christmas cakes are the stars, and Koreans aren’t big home cake bakers, the multitude of chain bakeries, ice cream parlors, doughnut shops and anyone with an ice cream cooler or oven (except, surprisingly, the roti bun places) competes in the Christmas cake business.

This is the busiest day of the year for the bakeries.  They’re packed.  All day long, each ajosshi you see on the street is carrying a cake box.

Christmas cakes don’t have any special Christmas flavors.  No cinnamon and spices.  They’re the same old cakes that they sell all year round.  So in order to stand out, bakeries make the cakes as gawdy and over-the-top as possible.  They’re impressive, considering the equivalent supermarket bakeries in America have these to offer.

(Pictures taken by my mom in the U.S.)

Tous les Jours

Let’s start with bakery chain Tous les Jours.

“Pink houses, baby, for you and me.”

Houses were a major theme this year.  This one looks like it will get some drafts in the winter.

Cute characters are always a hit.  Check out this… I guess it’s a bear.

And here’s a nice simple snowman scene.  I’m a fan of these chocolate butter cream cakes.

Santa’s at Frodo’s house.  I think this is, in fact, the Rankin-Bass Santa.

No, not quite.  I’m more curious as to what the chimney is doing in front of the house.  Oh, those hobbits!

Here he is again on a strawberry cake.  Either he’s delivering toys in a volcano, or something really nasty happened to the reindeer.  Either way, that teddy bear don’t look to happy.

“samtsirhC yrreM!!”

Paris Baguette

This year, Paris Baguette embraced its faux Gallicness by pronouncing “Joyeux Noël” on its cakes.  I’m guessing from the nose that this is Rudolph.  He’s a bit swollen, I guess, from the mumps.  Don’t squeeze those protrusions from his cheeks.  Should get those looked at.

I apologize for the shoddy photography, but this intrigued me by its double deckeredness.  I know.  It’s just a small cake on top of a large cake.  But the architecture caught my eye.

Watch out, Santa!  There’s a pine-tree-shaped alien!  It’s already eaten the inhabitants of that isolated cabin.

I am sure these are cakes for those evil bratty girls who think they’re angels.  The parents get it for her in a bout of wishful thinking.  That look on her face… she’s hiding something.

I’ve noticed more cookies have been incorporated in the cakes this year, and that’s a good thing.

Like this one.

And this one.

And here they are wheels for a train.  It’s a train, right?

If not aliens, we have the Big Bad Wolf sneaking up on Santa wearing a gouged sheep on his head.

“Strawberry fields for-e-vah.”

There’s that wolf again.

On a sleepy Christmas morning, this would pick me up.

Snowman’s happy to see me.

Monkey-penguins on an igloo.

Nothing says winter like… um, blueberry cake.

In my opinion, this is the best one.  The Korean title loosely translates as “My First Snowman Experience Story.”

Inspired by Princess Leia.

Dunkin Donuts

Dunkin is one of the most low rent of the chains with Christmas cakes.  They didn’t even have any on display.  I had to make do with this cardboard cut out.

Baskin Robbins

Look!  This cute penguin is wearing the skin of another penguin on its head.  A tribute to “Silence of the Lambs.”

Baskin Robbins does its ice cream cakes.  How else do they stay in business during this season?  (I did see inside that they had a Boston Cream Pie flavor this month… may need to investigate further.)  Now, I remember at home that Baskin Robbins cakes were combinations of cake and ice cream, since cake and ice cream go well together.  In Korea, ice cream cakes have no actual cake.  They’re ice cream molds.

Snowman.  Most appropriate ice cream cake ever.  At Baskin Robbins, you get only one holiday.  And it’s a “Happy Holiday.”

B-R likes to stack these ice cream chunks.  Should someone warn Santa that the track is out?  Oh, it’s a “Back to the Future 3″ theme.

Nazi Penguin.  “Heil!”

Cute little chunky bear.  Sorta reminds me of Madam Trash Heap.

Prison for Mushroom.

The selling of the cakes continues from December 23rd and 24th, and into the late night.  Even midnight.  Young ladies stand outside selling the last cakes, calling on customers to try free samples.  This nice woman was more conservatively dressed than some of the cake hawkers I have seen on Christmas midnights.  It’s a surreal experience.  Women yelling about Christmas cakes.  Middle aged men doing the last-minute rush for gifts and cakes.

A Korean silent night.

Tags: All Korean Food, cake, christmas, Korea

Check out today’s JoongAng Daily for a piece I wrote about surviving Christmas in Korea as an expat–especially for those of you who don’t want to shell out $100 for steam table turkey.

Beat the buffet rush and cook at home with friends (JoongAng Daily)

Tags: All Korean Food, christmas, duck

Our friend Paul “Ajosshi” Matthews was accosted by a ChristMAS sheep and was handed a Paris Baguette ChristMAS CD–for autotune lovers everywhere.

Paul breaks it down.

Tags: christmas, Korea

We’re in wacky Christmas cake season in Korea.  Each year the bakeries, doughnut shops, ice cream parlors and anyone in possession of a piping bag sell cakes that are even more over-the-top than the year before.

YOUR MISSION

Take pictures of the coolest, wackiest, most amazing Christmas cakes you see and send them to zen_at_zenkimchi.com.  We’ll collect them and post them on ZenKimchi.  Please include your name (or “anonymous”) and where you spotted the cake.

Now… GO!

Tags: All Korean Food, cake, christmas, Korea

We’re in crunch time now.  For the Korean foodie in your life, or for the food nut in general, here are some books that I have read and recommend.

Good Morning, Kimchi (Sook-ja Yoon)	The Grande Dame of Korean cuisine teaches the basics of making kimchi and the major styles.  She then shows how to bring the techniques forward to non-traditional vegetables, like asparagus, endive and cauliflower.
The Korean Kitchen (Copeland Marks)	The author traveled all over Korea collecting recipes.  This is a good source for regional dishes.  I also like this one because it gives recipes for basic household favorites, something that the touristy cookbooks neglect.  This is good down home country cookin’.  There are no pictures, but the descriptions and stories more than make up for that.
Authentic Recipes from Korea (David Cline Price, Masano Kawana)	This is another gorgeous picture book and one of the good ones that covers the basics, like bibimbap and  galbi jjim while throwing in some of the special dishes, like yukhui (Korean steak tartare).

And here some other great foodie books that everyone must have.

The Story of Sushi, aka The Zen of Fish (Trevor Corson)	Trevor Corson enrolls in a sushi school in California, tracking the progress of the students and relating a history of sushi from its pre-Japanese origins to its introduction in the U.S.  By the time you finish the book, you will find yourself looking at your sushi with a more critical eye towards how the fish is cut, the amount of wasabi and even the alignment of the rice.
Salt: A World History (Mark Kurlansky)	DON’T LAUGH!!  I’m serious.  Once you open this book, you’ll get addicted.  It uses salt as the platform to show how many of the world’s cuisines developed and is full of fascinating trivia, such as the origin of the word salary and the American Civil War history of the Tabasco company.  Deceptively boringly titled book that is a real page turner.
Kitchen Confidential (Anthony Bourdain)	Required reading.  This was the book that changed my life and influenced me to come to Korea and live it to its fullest.  No, Korea isn’t in there.  It’s the classic book that launched the international career of Anthony Bourdain and stuck him with the “bad boy chef” label.  This was written while Tony was still bustin’ his ass at the stove barely making ends meet and goes into all the stories of the wild roughneck world of cooks. Also recommended from Anthony Bourdain: A Cook’s Tour No Reservations
On Food and Cooking (Harold McGee)	I’m in the middle of this book now, and I wish I had gotten it before.  It explains in detail the science behind why food behaves and tastes the way it does and gives tips on how to make it better.  Did you know egg yolks have protein strings that attach to the ends of the shell to keep them suspended in the middle?  Did you know that the same substance gives the orange color to carrots and salmon?  Did you know that the anti-oxidant properties of green tea can help stifle the fishy smell of fish?  It’s food nerd porn.
On the Line (Eric Ripert and Christine Muhlke)	This is not a cookbook, even though it has some recipes.  It’s a behind-the-scenes look at one of the top fine dining destinations of the world.  It tells you the secrets of how they pull it off–and they may regret sharing them because now people will notice the magicians palming the cards.  It goes into the nitty gritty of the restaurant and kitchen layouts, how orders are called and the sequence of preparation, how to read the tickets and the 129 cardinal sins that they make all the employees know by heart.  This book is also interesting in that one of the background characters is Jennifer Carroll, who was one of the finalists in Top Chef Vegas.
The Flavor Bible (Karen Page, Andrew Dornenburg)	This is a new one, and I’m working my way through it.  It’s a fascinating reference companion.  Here’s how it works.  You have an ingredient–say–crab.  You look it up, and it lists all the flavors that could work with it.  Classic flavors, like avocados, chives and lemon are in bolded caps.  Recommended flavors, like ginger, lemongrass and Dijon mustard, are bolded.  But it also gives some flavor additions you may not have considered, like apples, mangoes, and yogurt.  It’s compiled by surveying the world’s top chefs.  Really cool for the kitchen flavor Picasso.
The Perfectionist (Rudolph Chelminski)	The tragic story of the rise of one of the world’s top chefs and his success at turning an aging country restaurant into an international destination only to succumb to the pressures of being at the top.  Not only did I learn the story of the legendary Bernard Loiseau.  I learned a lot about the history and industry of French cuisine–from heavy brown sauces of the 19th century to the light haute cuisine of the latter 20th century.  Make sure to have a baguette and French onion soup close by when reading.
Peace, Love and Barbecue (Mike Mills and Amy Mills Tunnicliffe)	The book that has made me homesick.  Or which inspires me to go out and get some Korean smoked pork.  Written by one of the greatest living masters of the barbecue arts, it goes into the barbecue culture, the distinct regional styles, and it highlights some notable restaurants all over the U.S.  I particularly like it because it features Big Bob Gibson’s in Decatur, Alabama, where I grew up.  In fact, my first job at 12 years old was dressing up in a Popeye costume and waving at cars in front of a Popeye’s Chicken across the street from Gibson’s.  I can still smell the hickory.

These are some of the books on my bookshelf that have the ZenKimchi stamp of approval.  You can get them quickly through Amazon by clicking the book links.  If the person you are shopping for lives in Korea, I also recommend What the Book–though the delivery times will likely be two weeks.

What are your recommendations?

Tags: All Korean Food, christmas, cookbooks